Developing persuasive health messages for a behaviour-change-support-system that promotes physical activity

Abstract

This paper describes the first of three experiments conducted to investigate the efficacy of a proposed persuasive mHealth messaging intervention that motivates individuals to become more physically active. In order to develop a set of persuasive health messages that can be used in the principal experiment, which examines a particular message-tailoring strategy, we conducted an online survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk. In this online study participants rated a series of health messages to indicate each message’s level of persuasiveness, as well as the message’s focus. This study was essential, as disagreements exist on how to frame persuasive health messages in the context of promoting physical activity. Among the proposed 57 messages, 14 messages rated as the most persuasive were selected for the principal experiment.